


around the lake, around the world

by Philomytha



Category: Sharing Knife - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 07:05:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13118589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philomytha/pseuds/Philomytha
Summary: Dag as others see him.





	around the lake, around the world

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nomeancity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomeancity/gifts).



Only one more left. It was Dag, of course. The almost-last stragglers who'd found themselves walking the pattern through a bog were drying their boots off by the fire, and only her graceless nephew was still out there somewhere. Next time, she'd have to link with him herself. Mari had partnered him with the easygoing Taz in the hope that some of Taz's calm nature would rub off on Dag, but instead Taz had been unhelpfully relaxed about Dag wandering off on his own. Arranging the partners on patrol was proving harder than she'd expected. She scraped the last of the mud off her own boots and extended her groundsense to its limits again. If Dag was within a mile, he'd sense her. If he was paying attention. 

The sun was sinking. If she was going to have to get everyone up to search for him, better to do it now, before they were all too comfortable. She could almost hear the complaints and arguments already, but if he didn't come back soon she would have no choice. She was about to speak when she felt a flicker at the furthest reach of her groundsense. She concentrated, eyes closing for a moment. Taz looked up at her. 

"That him?"

"Maybe..." Something wasn't right. It felt like Dag, but changed, not the same young man who'd set out on his pattern-walk this morning. He entered her clear groundsense range and Mari was standing up without awareness of having moved. After you'd once encountered that particular stunned numbness in a fellow patroller's ground, you never forgot it. 

"Malice," she whispered. Her first, as patrol leader. Dag's first too. It must have grazed him in his ground. He needed to practice veiling more, a part of her thought. She was turning into a patrol leader. 

All the patrol was watching her now. Mari checked Dag again more carefully. He'd been carrying one of the primed knives this patrol bore. He didn't have it any longer. Her mouth was dry. 

"Dag's met a malice," she said hoarsely. "His knife's gone. Everyone up." 

The rest of the patrol was already starting to move. Mari summoned her horse with half her attention, focusing again on Dag. He was mounted and approaching fast, obviously suffering from blight-sickness, but there was no fear in him. Of course, it was Dag. It didn't mean... but he was in sight now, descending the hill to where they were camped in the hollow, and Mari stood still and waited for him. 

"Hold on, everyone," she said. "I think..."

Dag took one hand off the saddle and waved to them, and it was a wave of triumph. Then she heard him: "I got it! I got it! It was a sessile and I got it!" 

Then he fell off the horse. Mari groaned and began to walk over to him. She would have to send the patrol out, check for mud-men, check everything. But first, this graceless scamp was owed something. He couldn't keep time, he went haring off on wild side-tracks, he misplaced his gear constantly and he seemed to think he was immortal, but none of that mattered against the essential one thing. He had slain his first malice, and he was a patroller.

* * *

"...and double back and complete the pattern after we get her to the medicine tent."

"But if we don't complete the pattern straight away there's no point bothering, we'll have to do it all again from the start."

"We can't do the pattern four patrollers down, but you can't get her to camp with any less, not with that broken leg." 

Kauneo rubbed her forehead and listened to the patrollers argue. The tall southerner was taking no part in it, standing by Zalla's stretcher frowning down at the injured woman, but it was more thoughtful than forbidding. Zalla twitched, and Dag Redwing gave her another ground reinforcement to ease the pain. 

"You should save that for later," Kauneo told him. "It's not going to be an easy road back for her." 

"We can send her back with an escort of four and still complete the pattern now," Dag said in oblique answer. "You've got to change the patterns." He stooped down and sketched a map in the hard-packed snow. "Look. Your regular pattern plan expects that most of the patrollers have a groundsense range of about a hundred paces in all directions. But you and I both have ranges up to a mile, and two others in the patrol can go half a mile. So as long as the patrollers who escort Zalla are the ones with the shortest ranges, the rest of us can complete the same pattern without them, only more stretched-out like." He made a few more illustrative lines in the snow, then looked up at her and gave a crooked smile. "I think some of them are looking forward to getting back to camp for a bit. D'you want me to give the idea out, take the heat?"

Kauneo snorted. "They'll do as I tell them." She studied the sketch a moment longer. "This could work, Dag Redwing. This could work." 

His crooked smile straightened out and widened, and unintended, Kauneo found herself smiling back.

* * *

"Do you need to stop?"

Dag gave a grunt, which Fairbolt interpreted as no. He thought he could count the number of words Dag had spoken to him this whole week on the fingers of one hand. Then again, the fingers of one hand were all that Dag had. The sour thought came unbidden, but then, he'd spent the week with Dag. He wasn't quite wishing the mud-wolf had finished the job, but he could see how a few more weeks of Dag's company and a fellow might get to wondering. Dag sure was. 

But Dag had been a good patroller, more than a good patroller, and Fairbolt knew this locked-down silence too well to feel truly angry at it. Dag had led his company to victory, nearly died, and woke up to discover that he'd won the war but lost his life. The injuries to the body were healed now, as much as they ever would be, but the other injuries were not. Dag had kept his ground veiled tight, only letting the makers do what was essential to treat his wounds. But Fairbolt didn't need to use his groundsense to read Dag. 

There were more buildings in sight now, houses, farms, workshops of all sorts, though the town itself lay down at the confluence of the rivers. Fairbolt rode on, keeping his own ground veiled to protect himself from the uncontrolled farmer grounds all around them now. Dag looked from side to side once, the first real reaction Fairbolt had seen from him. Dag had walked around the lake, but he'd never been to Tripoint or to any other farmer settlement of this size. _Something new for you, company captain._

The road curved, and the town suddenly lay below them. Dag's horse halted, and Fairbolt tamped down a smile. Tamped down even the reaction in his ground, because Dag's ground was opening, just a little, in curiosity and wonder at what lay below. 

"Tripoint," Fairbolt said. "Come on. We're going to visit a friend of mine here. I think you'll like him." 

"You have a friend here?" _Among farmers?_ went unsaid, but not unheard. 

"A farmer. Yes. Come on in. Come and see what he makes." 

Dag's ground stayed flickering open as they rode down, past farmer wagons and tight-packed buildings, and Fairbolt sat back on his horse and watched. He thought this just might do the trick.

* * *

The scrapes and thuds carried clearly from the weaving-room. Nattie sat back, plying her spindle steadily, and listened. They knew she was here, and Fawn was well used to it. Dag--well, there was something tickling at the edge of her mind that told her the Lakewalker knew she was there and didn't mind. Ground, they called it, and Nattie didn't rightly know what it meant, but she knew she had a sense of a person that wasn't sound or smell or feel. Dag felt deep, a bit dangerous, strong. But kind with it. Kindness mattered a lot, Nattie had come to find. Not pity, not duty, just plain kindness. 

"Buttons." That was Fawn. One broken arm, one missing hand: no, the Lakewalker wasn't going to be fastening any buttons any time soon. In fact, Nattie couldn't rightly imagine how he'd been dressing or undressing at all. But she didn't need to imagine, she could hear it through the thin wall. 

"Agh, no, Spark!" That was Dag, a laughing protest at some ticklish touch, judging from his tone. The warmth of it made Nattie smile too, even muted through the wall.

"Almost done." 

It would be a kindness to help a man without the use of either arm. But it wasn't kindness in Fawn's tone, nor patient acceptance in Dag's. It was warmth. Affection. Intimacy.

Too late for a chaperone here, Trill, she thought acidly. They've jumped the cliff. No wonder that Fawn might be dazzled by a stranger, a man from outside her everyday life, who'd rescued her from some danger and taken her on an adventure. But the Lakewalker seemed to be dazzled right back. 

Lakewalkers and farmers couldn't marry. She knew that, everyone knew that. Everyone knew blind women were next thing to useless, too. But what everyone knew was one thing, what each person did, up close in each different case and situation, that was something else. There were always ways around. And if Fawn and her Dag found a way, she'd see to it the Bluefield family didn't block it off.

* * *

Barr tensed before Arkady entered, retreating towards the little room he shared with Remo. Arkady's ground was sizzling with anger and he slammed the door behind him. Barr tried to shrink into the wall, but inevitably, Arkady's attention fell on him. 

"Short-sighted, hidebound idiots!" Arkady burst out. Barr hoped he wasn't one of them. He nodded supportively, trying to look far-sighted and not in the least hidebound. 

"They'd rather throw away the most remarkable ground talent I've seen here in all my years than forgive a--a perfectly natural action. Blight it, Dag's a true maker! It _hurts_ a maker in his ground to turn away people asking for help! It was only a matter of time before he pulled this sort of stunt."

Barr tried not to blink with surprise. He clearly wasn't the intended, nor the first, recipient of this tirade. He'd never heard that about makers' grounds, nor had he realised how much in sympathy Arkady was with his erratic and unorthodox apprentice. He didn't know if Dag knew either. 

"But that Antan just brushed me off. I swear he didn't hear more than one word in three I said to him. Me! He thinks he can just let Dag go and everything will return to normal and he won't have to do any hard thinking. If he's ever done any hard thinking, which I'm beginning to doubt." Arkady glared around the room. 

"Right, right," said Barr. An audacious plan was starting to take shape in his mind. Remo thought he was helping Dag's cause by running around with Neeta trying to sweet-talk people into supporting Dag, but Barr's idea would actually help Dag achieve his goals. "Perhaps," he said carefully, "they don't realise just how serious you are about this."

"I've been arguing with Antan and Challa and that blighted Flatfish woman for the past hour," Arkady retorted. "They can't suppose I'm doing that for my own entertainment."

Barr wondered how much of his anger Arkady had shown to the council members, and how much of this had been bottled up while he attempted to persuade them to let Dag stay.

"If Dag hadn't found it necessary to wind Antan up so much when he went out to investigate, this would all be much easier," Arkady grumbled. "You said he went on about farmers needing to know more about Lakewalkers again?"

"It's a bit of an obsession with him," Barr said, trying to think of a way to lead this conversation around to the question of what Arkady should do next. 

"Hmph. Don't I know it. And with that wife of his pregnant he wants to fix the whole wide green world before the baby's born. Blighted idealist." He paused. "I daresay he'll be heading north now."

"I guess so. He'd like to come back here, but not on Antan's terms."

"Patrollers! Always having to charge head-first at every problem they see! Antan would have come round, in time. But if Dag goes north, we won't have that time." Arkady glared at Barr, who flinched. "I hate being stampeded."

That's why I'm trying to herd you very subtly, Barr thought. "They'll see what they've lost when he's gone, I guess," he said. 

"No they won't. He's been so blighted reclusive, never stirring a step without Fawn. They don't understand the extent of his talent." Arkady paused, stared into space. Barr held his breath. "Well, then. I'll just have to make it clear to them." He looked properly at Barr. "Have you finished your packing? Then you can help me with mine. If they won't take Dag, then I'll go with him."


End file.
